Funny: How to Break Windows Notepad

It's not a bug! It's unintended irony!

Thursday, May 18, 2006 by Zoomba | Discussion: Windows Software

Here's a really funny way to break Notepad that a coworker showed me this morning. I bet this is one of those jokes that's been around for ages, but this was the first I ever heard of it, so it's new to me.

This actually works. It will not crash your computer, it just breaks Notepad in that it causes it to display very oddly. No perm damage comes of the following steps.

Here's how to do it:
1. Open up Notepad (not Wordpad, not Word or any other word processor)
2. Type in this sentence exactly (without quotes): "this app can break"
3. Save the file to your hard drive.
4. Close Notepad
5. Open the saved file by double clicking it.

Instead of seeing your sentence, you should see a series of squares. For whatever reason, Notepad can't figure out what to do with that series of characters and breaks

Again, it doesn't crash the app or anything, it's just a funny little twise of fate/unintended feature
First Previous Page 1 of 2 Next Last
Dr Guy
Reply #1 Thursday, May 18, 2006 2:34 PM
Must be another easter egg.  But it works.  You guys have too much time on your hands.
Zoomba
Reply #2 Thursday, May 18, 2006 2:41 PM
We're IT security, we're supposed to break things in interesting ways!
Dr Guy
Reply #3 Thursday, May 18, 2006 3:18 PM

We're IT security, we're supposed to break things in interesting ways!

I thought that was the IT network engineers.

Keikonium
Reply #4 Thursday, May 18, 2006 3:22 PM
lol, thats odd indeed. On my computer, it showed up as symbols (chinese or Japanese, not sure which one).

So I took it to babble fish and got the following:

Simp Chinese: 桴 □the worried thoughts ash 挠 □□knocks □
Trad Chinese: 桴 獩 □the ash □湡戠 knocks happy
Japanese: 桴? ? Ash? ? ? 敲 歡

Quite interesting
Tominated
Reply #5 Thursday, May 18, 2006 6:41 PM
same
i think it's chinese
Tominated
Reply #6 Thursday, May 18, 2006 6:47 PM
googles translator said this
"After 獩 indignant grey harassment 湡 personal sounded Fun"
i translated it from simplified chinese
Jaramia
Reply #7 Thursday, May 18, 2006 7:31 PM
You should submit this to eeggs.com <---A sweet site full of easter eggs
Tommy999999
Reply #8 Thursday, May 18, 2006 7:44 PM
this is really cool ! i tried it and it actully works, it is chinese but its only a bunch of random characters
Chris TH
Reply #9 Thursday, May 18, 2006 8:47 PM
You don't even have to create the file with notepad!

It breaks on those characters when created by another editor or via the console!


Posted via WinCustomize Browser/Stardock Central
XX
Reply #10 Thursday, May 18, 2006 9:19 PM
Weird. It worked for me too.
Andrew Harwood
Reply #11 Saturday, May 20, 2006 10:06 PM
it works but for some reason when you open it and delete all the weird squares and type the same over, save, and open it dosn't do it. Weird.
Zoomba
Reply #12 Sunday, May 21, 2006 6:51 AM
Yeah, I found the same thing... and after you do that, the next few times you try to create a new file with the same string, it won't work either.
Keikonium
Reply #13 Sunday, May 21, 2006 10:19 AM
You don't have the asian fonts installed little-whip . It is Chinese
Dr Guy
Reply #14 Sunday, May 21, 2006 1:05 PM
It is Chinese


I see that on this computer. And you are right, on the work one, I did not have them installed, so they got squares. Mystery solved! Microsoft is selling out to the Chinese!
PurrBall
Reply #15 Sunday, May 21, 2006 5:04 PM
No wonder why Microsoft delays their OSes.
MasonM
Reply #16 Sunday, May 21, 2006 7:21 PM
ummmm, it's a windows app so it's already broken
PurrBall
Reply #17 Monday, May 22, 2006 4:07 PM
Calculator isnt broken AFAIK...
Dr Guy
Reply #18 Monday, May 22, 2006 4:24 PM

Calculator isnt broken AFAIK...

Is it based on the Pentium 90?

Tarkus
Reply #19 Monday, May 22, 2006 7:08 PM
Zoomba
Reply #20 Tuesday, May 23, 2006 9:31 AM
Is it based on the Pentium 90?


2+2=5 for suffeciently large values of 2

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